


The History the Maker Abandoned

by FullmetalChords



Category: Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Alternate History, Alternate Timelines, Chaos Theory, Character Death, M/M, Multiverse, They get better though, Time Travel, more warnings to be added as necessary, sort of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-23
Updated: 2016-10-14
Packaged: 2018-07-26 08:11:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7566751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FullmetalChords/pseuds/FullmetalChords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Haunted by dreams that seem to show the future, Anders’s dark reality is lit only by hopes of a time when mages can be free. Can such a thing happen… or has it already happened?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

He is six years old the first time it happens.

He is six years old and loves climbing trees, still small enough and light enough to reach the ripe apples that sit at the top. His older sister waits below, apron held open to catch whatever he can throw down to her.

The boy looks around, early autumn wind ruffling his blond hair, savoring the breeze on his face and the scent of distant, spicy smoke of the fire in their family’s hut. The sensation of strong afternoon sun warms his skin, and he feels light, invincible.

He will reach for this feeling for the rest of his life.

There is one particularly juicy apple on a high branch, hovering temptingly beyond his reach, and he inches along his branch, small fingers reaching out to try and grab the fruit out of thin air.

That’s when the branch snaps beneath him.

The boy lets out a shout as he falls, his sister shrieking his name in distress, and the boy brings his arms up in front of his face as if to shield himself from the ground rising too quickly up to meet him –

\-- and just as suddenly, he is on his feet again. The firesmoke is replaced in his nostrils with the scent of dung and hay, and he lowers his arms to find he’s in the barn, lazy midmorning light streaming through slats in the roof. His heart is still pounding in his chest, and his sister is nowhere to be found, and Missy is still sitting in her corner, licking the litter of kittens she’d had just that morning. He’d come to take a peek at them before going to pick apples with his sister, already coming up with names for the four of them in his head.

He knows he should get back to work, but he can’t resist the creatures’ tiny mews, so he carefully wanders over to scratch the mother under the chin, to take a peek at the fragile creatures one more time. Is it his imagination, or has the light changed?

He brushes the image of the apple tree off as a strange daydream. But decades later, after his sister and the barn and the cats and even his name are long gone, he’ll still remember the horrid swooping feeling in his stomach as he fell.

\--

His childhood is marked by other such incidents. Falling into a rushing stream only to find himself a moment later helping his mother hang laundry to dry. Getting too close to a spooked horse, only to realize that he’s still safe in bed. He comes to accept them as nightmares spurred by his own morbid imagination and stops crying about them to his father.

It all changes when he is twelve.

It begins as a normal day by any standard. The boy has woken up before dawn, per custom, to feed the animals before going with his father to work in the fields. He is already dreading it. Harvest is historically when his father’s temper is the shortest, and as the only son, he is expected to help him bring it all in. Being alone with the man for nine hours a day, breaking his back as he bends to pull up potato plants by the roots, having nowhere to hide from the relentless rush stream of gripes and abuse. His father, an Ander immigrant and devout Andrastian, always seemed to have something to say about his work ethic, or his mother’s fragile kindness, or the latest boy he’d seen his daughter smile at. Day after day the boy can hear him muttering to himself in his native language even as they work, words that drip into the boy’s ears like poison. _Deine wertlos Mutter, deine Schwester der Hure._ Yesterday the boy had stumbled in the fields, let his basket fall from his arms, and had received a slap for his trouble. _Fauler Junge!_

This morning, the boy is pitching hay into the horse’s stall, blood boiling as he thinks of the harsh words his father never seems to abandon, furious that he’ll have to spend yet another day working alongside the man – but all of this will soon no longer be important.

One moment his pitchfork digs into the hay, and the next, there are sparks catching the straw alight, and flames creeping up the walls, and smoke choking the air, and the boy is surrounded by walls of flames in no time at all. He cries out, tries to shield himself, tries to run, but this is no bad dream, there is no way to wake up from what’s about to happen, there’s no way out – he’s about to die unless he can figure out what to do—

 _Use frost magic_!

The answer pops into his head as if he’d already known it. Before he can even ponder what the words mean, ice is already streaming from his hands in cold jets. The flames hiss into nothingness when the ice hits them, but there is still more fire spiraling up the old wood of the barn walls to blaze on in the rafters, the wood cracking dangerously above them. Quickly, the boy lets the screaming horse out of its stall, crosses the barn to let the goats free from their pen, and stoops to catch his favorite barn cat in his arms before he, too, escapes the collapsing wooden structure –

\-- only to meet the stricken gaze of his father, who has seen everything.

The Templars come not too long after that. The boy cannot even protest as they take him away in their chains, his feet hanging on the ground as he is frog-marched between them. He can hear his mother sobbing, hear his sister demand answers from the Templars or their father. The boy dares to look back only to see his father, normally so fuelled by rage, cowering on his knees in prayer, fervent tears streaming down the man’s narrow face as he begs the Maker aloud to remove His curse from their family.

His Templar escorts question where he received his training, how long he’d been hiding his gifts. The boy squares his jaw, looks the strange men in the eyes, and says nothing.

The real question, after all, is not how he managed to make ice come from his hands. It is how he knew so instantly what to do, and why he cannot shake the feeling that he has done all of this before.

\--

The Circle is nothing more than a prison: no windows, only one door that is always kept locked from the inside, guards patrolling night and day. The boy’s silence continues once inside the Circle, not returning greetings, not answering questions, not even revealing his name.

The boy who had felt most at home climbing trees, he reasons, is dead anyway.

He dreams, sometimes, of the days he used to play with his sister, of the cats back in the old barn. Of the way sunlight used to feel on his face. Of what life was like before he was chained for having magic.

He has other dreams, too. Dreams, for instance, where the pimply teenager who sleeps in the bed above his is dragged off in the middle of the night, never to return.

He looks at the young man now – is his name Darren? Devon? – and sees something nervous in his eyes, something that’s bound to snap at the lightest pressure. It’s not an uncommon sight in the Circle.

“You can’t let the fear demon in,” he finds himself telling the teen. They are the first words he’s said since arriving at Kinloch Hold. “Two nights from now, they’ll take you. Practice a few elemental lightning spells by then and you’ll be fine.”

Why is he saying that? How did he know to say it?

Darren-Devon simply throws him a strange look. “Was I talking to you, Ander?”

The boy swallows. “First of all, I’m Fereldan,” he starts, but his bunkmate has already left the room.

He’s woken two nights later when two Templars come in, dragging Devon-Darren out of his bed. The boy never sees him again.

\--

Six months in, he decides to run.

He has lain awake at night thinking of possible ways to escape – rappelling down the wall with a rope made of bedsheets, perhaps, or sneaking out with a shipment of magical items to Denerim. His mind picks along the path of each new possibility, considering possible pitfalls or weaknesses of each plan. Somehow he can visualize each of them perfectly. If only most of them didn’t end in recapture.

In the end, out of desperation, he simply makes a break for it, sprinting to the lake’s edge during one of the mandated fitness hours the Templars allow for mages. The water is freezing as he dives in, and his robes tangle about his legs, but he swims nonetheless, kicking madly for the surface, ignoring the shouts of his fellow mages and the furious roars of the Templars behind him. He can see his robe dragging him under the water, making him sink to the bottom of Lake Calenhad… and so he shucks it off, swimming in nothing but his smallclothes, the far shore getting nearer with every stroke.

He has determination, he has willpower, he has every fiber in his small body screaming for freedom.

The Templars have a boat.

By the time he reaches the opposite shore, gasping for breath, they are already there waiting for him, unceremoniously draping him with a blanket before lifting his limp body into the rowboat.

First Enchanter Irving is waiting when they get back to Kinloch Hold, looking at the boy with sympathy.

“Why did you run, Anders?”

The boy is dripping all over Irving’s floor. He sniffles, running a hand over his face, trying to picture where he went wrong. Wishing desperately to go back and try again, to find some path, however small, that might lead back to the small farmhouse with his mother and the barn cats and the apple tree.

“I wanted to go home,” he said, and can’t keep his voice from quavering.

But home is slipping further and further away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is inspired in part by the _Zero Escape_ series. If you've never played those games, don't worry. They shouldn't be necessary for understanding what's happening in this fic; it's just where I got a few of the ideas. The fic title also comes from the most recent game. 
> 
> Essentially, the guiding principle of this fic (especially its relationship with time) is multiverse theory. In other words, everything that possibly can happen, has already happened, and Anders slowly becomes more aware of this as time goes on. If you're unfamiliar with the concept, or if my explanation doesn't quite make sense, don't worry. It should all become clearer in time. 
> 
> I'd also like to address the Major Character Death warning I put on this fic. Important characters (including Anders) will die in this fic, BUT none of their deaths will be permanent, I promise. Again, it should all make sense soon. I only wanted to clear up the warning because I know that can be a put-off for a lot of people. Future chapters will bear more detailed content warnings as needed. 
> 
> Just please know that in the end, Anders and his loved ones will be safe, he and Justice will be fully merged, Hawke will love and trust him, and everything's going to be okay. :)
> 
> I have the first 4 chapters or so of this fic written, and my current plan is to post once per week. 
> 
> Feel free to leave comments below, or message me on Tumblr (phoenixrei) any time you want to chat about Anders or Schrodinger's Cat! :3


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings applicable to this chapter: mentions of suicide and Tranquility, descriptions of Anders in solitary confinement, lots of instances of unreality. This chapter puts Anders through the psychological wringer a bit, though I tried to stick to our knowledge of canon as best I could. (In other words, not hurting him much more than canon does. Which isn't saying much.)

Years pass.

The boy has finally accepted that he will never go home, but he still never quite gets used to the all-encompassing fear that life in the Circle brings. The thick windowless walls of unforgiving stone that want to press the breath out of his lungs. The friends that disappear in the night, or classmates who swallow poison and never wake up. The whispers in the corridors that fade whenever a Templar gets too near, or the desperation with which two people cling to one another when they think they are close enough to being alone.

Anders – he has embraced the name now – adapts nevertheless. He refuses to let this culture of fear isolate him, so he cracks jokes, plays games, seeks out company. Male or female, sexual or platonic, there is little distinction to him.

Everyone here is alone. Everyone here is terrified. Anders is no exception, even if he hides the fear behind smiles and practical jokes.

He wonders if everyone can picture the possible deaths of all their classmates so vividly, or if it is only him, his once-vivid imagination now flourishing in this environment of pure paranoia.

His old bunkmate is years beyond help, but he continues to dream about the Harrowings of his neighbors, of friends or trysts that will beg the Templars for Tranquility rather than face the unknown. As best he can, he offers reassurance to the people he sees in his dreams.

“You remember the ice spells we learned last year? Use them in the Fade, often as you can.”

“You have eight months until your Harrowing. There’s still time to learn entropy magic by then. Tranquility isn’t your only choice.”

“You’re a talented healer, but you’ll need at least one offensive spell to get through the Harrowing. I’ll help you practice.”

Not everyone takes his advice, with many of his fellow mages dismissing his words as more of his jokes. Anders is somewhat gratified, however, to note that the ones who seem to take him seriously tend to end up alive.

And in the meantime, he spends every free second he has in the library, digging through hundreds of dusty, heavy volumes on Fade theory, trying to find some old record, some legend of dreams like his, any description of what is happening to him.

There is nothing.

\--

Escape becomes a real possibility once he passes his own Harrowing, a confused encounter with a Pride demon shaped like a cat. His second success involves him climbing down the wall of the tower with his bare hands in the middle of the night, feeling for outcroppings with his feet and carefully dropping to ledges he knows are there (how does he know when he can barely see?). He swims across the lake in complete darkness and emerges on the far shore at last, a stolen tunic and hose in the sack he had strapped to his back.

He finds his way to a small manor, where a local teyrn is beset by a gang of bandits. A bit of fire magic frightens them off, and in gratitude, the teyrn gives him a token, an amulet to hang round his neck, and lets him stay as long as he likes.

But Anders already knows ( _how_ does he know?) that the Templars will stop by four days from now in search of him, and so after a thank-you, a long hot bath and a good meal, he leaves without saying goodbye. He finds himself in a wheat field next, offering his services during the harvest in return for lodging, and stays about two weeks before some voice in the back of his mind warns him the Templars are coming again, and he’s soon on his way once more.

On the whole, it takes the Templars a full month to drag him back to that accursed Circle, but he takes the tiniest amount of satisfaction in knowing that, if not for his intuition, this whatever-you-call-it, it would have been much, much sooner.

\--

Freedom becomes intoxicating to Anders, and though he does remain devoted to studying the art of spirit healing, much of his spare energy is spent on searching for new paths to escape through.

Or it was, until he becomes close with Karl Thekla.

Karl is three years older than him, a junior enchanter who helps tutor the youngest apprentices in creation magic. There is still kindness in his eyes, not yet beaten out of him by the Circle. There is passion, too, in the way he speaks of the Chantry’s unfair policies toward magic, in the way he speaks of a world where mages might be able to come and go freely from their towers.

It is that passion that makes Anders lean forward and kiss him for the first time, eager to taste it for himself.

They become lovers – or whatever passes for lovers when fear still hangs heavy over them like a blanket, when it is dangerous to demonstrate affection or speak sweet words to each other. They have both seen how stories like theirs end. They both hold back just enough to keep some illusion of self-preservation.

But, oh, how Anders longs for Karl whenever they are not together. How he clings to him whenever they are. Karl is the first person in the Circle who has given him hope that he won’t die here. It is the greatest gift he’s ever received in his life, and Anders only hopes Karl knows how grateful he is for it. Hopes he’s managed to give some of that back to him in return.

He should have known by then that any hope was a lie.

One morning, Anders wakes with a vision imprinted on his eyelids, so clear that it feels as though it has already happened. Karl’s back heading for the locked door, flanked by Templars, the word _Kirkwall_ hanging in the air. The image, far too vivid for his liking, strikes cold into his very bones.

It isn’t enough to keep him away from Karl – at this point no force in Thedas could do such a thing – but he tells him of what he’s seen, regardless. Most of the others have gone to breakfast, but they are sitting side by side on the library floor, in the hidden nook between two bookshelves that has become theirs, his and Karl’s. Their shoulders press together, the warmth of Karl’s hip seeping into his in a way he trusts.

“They’re taking you to Kirkwall,” he blurts. His hand itches to wrap around Karl’s at the thought of it, the image of his retreating back still burning into Anders’s retinas.

Karl looks at him, alarmed. “Who did you hear that from?”

“No one,” Anders admits. “I didn’t hear it anywhere…”

“Then how do you know?”

“I just… know.”

Anders swallows, trying to fight hysteria over this horrible thing that hasn’t happened yet, that could be a bad dream for all he knows. Karl, for his part, doesn’t laugh Anders off or call him paranoid, but does take his hand, giving it a gentle squeeze.

“Are you sure, Anders?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Anders insists, wiping away a sudden tear that’s rolled down his long nose. “There’s… there’s not much time left.”

There is a long pause as Karl digests this, his thumb still pressing soothing circles into the back of Anders’s hand.

“We were so careful,” Karl finally says, and Anders can hear his voice shake. “I did my best not to give them a reason to…” He curls his knees into his chest, and Anders moves without thinking to wrap his arms around Karl. “What are we supposed to do?”

“We’ll run away,” Anders murmurs, frantically smoothing back Karl’s hair. “I’ve escaped twice now, I’m sure we can do it again. We’ll leave and we’ll… we’ll keep running. It’ll be fine.”

“They’ll come after us,” Karl says, pulling away just enough to look Anders seriously in the eye.

“I’ll see them coming,” Anders insists, pressing his forehead against Karl’s. “I did it before. We’ll stay one step ahead of them.”

“You can’t keep looking over your shoulder forever,” Karl sighs, his eyes closed.

Anders shakes his head, still holding Karl close. “It’s not like that. I know when they’re coming, since I can… see the future.”

Even as he says it, something tells him that isn’t exactly right. But before he can think of a better way to say it, he feels Karl let out a soft snort of laughter against him.

“No one can see the future, Anders,” he says, one of his hands winding through the curls at the nape of Anders’s neck. “Be nice if we could.”

“But- I _can_ ,” Anders insists, his grip on Karl’s robes tightening. “I won’t let them hurt you. I promise.”

There is a long silence holding them together as they grip one another, both of them afraid to let go.

“There’s nowhere in the world we can run, Anders,” Karl whispers. “Nowhere we can be safe.”

“But we’d be together,” Anders pleads, and bends forward to kiss Karl deeply, holding him, silently pleading him to agree. “Karl… you know that I…”

“I know,” Karl says with a heavy nod, lips still brushing Anders’s. “You don’t have to say it. Just… stay in the moment with me.”

They stay there for a long time, Karl doing his best to make Anders forget what he’s seen.

\--

But he wakes up nearly a week later to find Karl gone.

“I haven’t seen him,” Surana says sadly when he asks her. “But I… I heard the Templars say something about…”

“Kirkwall,” Anders says, his stomach sinking. So his nightmare’s come true, then. Karl taken to the Gallows, far across the sea from Anders, at the mercy of the cruelest Templars in the Order…

He doesn’t know how he stays upright, in that moment.

It’s barely an hour later when he makes his third escape attempt.

\--

In the years that follow, Kirkwall remains a constant refrain for Anders. He rarely visits the library for books on spirit healing or elemental magic in order to further his education. Instead, he spends hours meditating in his chamber, trying to picture possible escape routes, some way to get passage on a ship to the Free Marches.

A way out of the tower is simple enough by now, after all the practice he’s had and all the time he spends looking for weak spots in its defense. He could dig through the cellar, climb down the tower wall’s outcroppings like before, jump out of a window in the Harrowing chamber on a windy day and float down with a parachute, sneak into an empty crate and make the Templars carry him out, disguise himself as a merchant and leave with a shipment of new runes…

They could all work. Some, he already knows, are more likely to succeed than others, but he tries them all anyway. The fourth attempt leaves him free for nearly six weeks. The fifth, two days.

For the sixth, he spends three weeks in a brothel in Denerim called the Pearl, using his various talents, both magical and not, to earn ship’s passage. The Templars take him away before he can board a ship, but the coin stays safe in his boot.

The seventh, he’s out for nine weeks. The eighth, three months. The ninth… the tenth… the eleventh… the twelfth…

He loses count. In fact, after a while, he starts to question how many of these escapes he’s actually _attempted,_ and how many he’s simply imagined out of desperation. He remembers, when being dragged back after his tenth escape attempt, a Templar hissing to her fellows that Anders was too much trouble. Remembers a sword sliding between his ribs as the others slept. But there’s no wound, not even the slightest scar, and he can’t remember coming back to the Circle after being left for dead by the side of the road. And other things too… There’s still a mark on his hip from his time at the Pearl, a tattoo of a cat painted in inky black… but he also distinctly remembers getting another tattoo on a different trip, a blocky letter _K_ on his right forearm. Yet now, looking at his arm, it appears completely clean.

He remembers all of these things, he _knows_ all these things happened, so why does his body not bear the same witness?

\--

Maybe this cell beneath the tower isn’t real either. Maybe it’s another nightmare, another warning, something his subconscious desperately wants to avoid. Maybe no one is responding to his screams because he’s finally in the Void, where the Chantry sisters have always told the mages they belong. There is simply _nothingness_ everywhere around him, blackness and claustrophobia and a feeling of terror that becomes his constant companion.

Sometimes he and terror are joined by a third, a furry figure prowling the darkness. Anders is sure it is a cat, reaches for the cat, names it Mr. Wiggums and lets it curl up, purring, on his chest. But sometimes the cat will vanish into thin air, even from his arms; and sometimes it will reappear days later in the far corner of his cell, tearing apart a rat with its teeth. Anders knows the creature can’t be real, assumes it’s likely the Pride demon come to stake its claim on his soul.

But he no longer has the strength to banish it.

He sleeps twenty hours a day. He doesn’t dream often, usually going somewhere in his mind where the dark and the quiet cradle him instead of strangle him. But there are still other times – times when the fear chokes his heart and he feels as though he might suffocate – when Anders feels his mind _shift_ , slide through some invisible barrier to show him, in brilliant detail, the beaches of Llomeryn, the hiss of the waves and the roughness of the sand beneath his stomach as he watches a crab crawl across the beach. He feels a good ache in his muscles as he climbs the Frostback Mountains, cool air fresh against his face. He feels Karl’s arms around him as they sleep in a barn in the Fereldan countryside, and experiences a rush of gratitude that they’d managed to escape Kinloch Hold together.

Anders has never seen Llomeryn, never climbed the Frostbacks. So why does he have the sense that he _has?_ Why does he remember Karl saying yes to his proposal that they run away together when he clearly didn’t?

It’s more nonsense, more tricks his mind wants to throw at him, but he lingers in each of them regardless, falling into each vivid hallucination willingly. He might have gone completely mad, but at least the madness sends him somewhere warm and bright.

\--

They finally drag him from the cell after what might be a year, but easily feels like at least four. Anders finds himself struggling to speak, his tongue no longer used to forming words, his throat still raw from screaming for months.

“So bright,” he all but slurs as he’s led back up the stairs, finding even the dim torchlight rough on his eyes after a year in pitch blackness. “Am I still in Llomeryn?”

The Templar escorting him to the bathing chamber says nothing, but he sees the man’s face soften as he looks over at Anders. The Templar must realize some small measure of what’s happened to him.

It takes Anders a few days to realize that he’s still in Ferelden, still trapped in the Circle, no closer to being free out here than he was down in the cell. The dreams he’d had of Llomeryn, of the Frostbacks, slip out of his grasp, their color slowly draining away, but the image of Karl remains, bright and fresh as ever.

And with him, the determination that feels as central to Anders as breathing does. _Freedom. Karl and I will be free. We’ll be together._

He has the sense, and he doesn’t know why, that it will soon be very easy for him to escape. It’s made even easier when he finds himself in the Templar storeroom – left there alone, no less, by a Templar escort who asked him to polish the armor! The Templars all treat him with kid gloves now, as though he is a harmless Tranquil. Anders makes it easy for them to make that mistake, he admits, since he spends so many hours these days lost in thought, in memories and hallucinations, visions of lightning shattering his skin and secret smiles hidden in dark beards, of his praying father and towers silhouetted by red light.

These visions are real, and so is the Circle, and so are the demons that hiss at him from every shadow, but nothing is more real, more urgent, than his need to escape.

Two weeks after he’s brought out of solitary confinement, Anders dons stolen pieces of Templar armor and walks almost casually out the front door, making what he somehow knows will be his final escape from what has been his prison these past two decades.

He never stops to think, not all the way to the northern wilds of Ferelden, why no one is chasing him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to the couple of you who commented on my first chapter!! I've been really nervous about this fic, so that makes me really happy. ^_^ Still planning on getting the next chapter up (feat. the Warden!) next weekend!
> 
> Feel free to visit my Tumblr, @phoenixrei, for lots of assorted stuff!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Facing a Blight sends Anders on a meandering trip to Amaranthine, where he meets someone he didn't expect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: major character death comes into play here. He gets better though.

The thing about being an apostate during a Blight is that there’s a lot more to worry about than just capture by Templars.

Not to say they still aren’t a factor, and though Anders dares to visit a couple of villages he still gives each small Chantry a wide berth. But before, food had been easier to find in exchange for a fair day’s work. Before, there were places to hide that were safe. Before, he’d had to be careful about who he revealed his magic to, going so far as to disguise his Circle-issued staff with a sharp piece of metal hastily tied to the end, so he might pass it off as a halberd or a hoe.

The Blight has changed all the rules.

The land itself appears poisoned, the soil stained black as though it were ink spilled across parchment. Nothing grows in the black earth, and the few farms around Lake Calenhad are completely deserted, their farmers having fled weeks earlier. Anders finds himself scavenging for food at every opportunity, using his herbalism knowledge to determine which plants are edible and which are poison, trying to set rudimentary traps for rabbits… and praying all the while that whatever he puts into his mouth hasn’t already been poisoned by the Taint.

Moreover, Anders finds himself looking over his shoulders for the darkspawn just as often as Templars, almost to the point where he nearly forgets Templars are still a threat. Templars, cruel though they often are, are still human. They can be tricked; they can be charmed. Men the darkspawn may have once been, but the only thing to do if he comes across a Hurlock, he quickly finds, is run, throwing spells over his shoulder all the way.

At the very least, the one blessing is that anyone he encounters on the road seems too preoccupied with their own escape to give a second glance to a possible apostate in their midst. Anders loses count of the families he comes across on the road, hauling small children by the hand while clutching bundles of clothing in the other. Some drag trunks behind them, leaving deep tracks in the muddy roads. He walks among them, sometimes healing them as discreetly as possible if they are limping or sick; and if they notice his magical aid, at least they don’t start screaming about demons in their midst.

The other blessing is that, most days, he can at least remember where he is. Half of his energy is spent on survival – finding food and water, continuing to move north – but the other half, Anders spends on re-learning his reality. He can’t afford to go mad again like he had beneath the Circle, his mind tricking him into forgetting even the basics of where he was. So he often quizzes himself as he walks, the most basic facts of his life coming to form something of a survival mantra.

_They call me Anders. I am a mage. I am in a forest. I am going north. There is a man I love named Karl Thekla. He is being held captive in the city of Kirkwall. I must free him. We must be free together._

Somehow, through it all, he survives, and he keeps walking.

\--

There is a fork in the road. Going left sends Anders to Highever and its northbound port. Right, to Amaranthine.

He goes left.

\--

Highever has been hit hard by the Blight. Its once-bustling port has become a ghost town, little more than a way station where refugees might stop before boarding a ship to a country with fewer darkspawn.

Anders has exactly six silvers and three coppers in his boot, leftover earnings from his time in the Pearl several years earlier. It has been kept safe through multiple escape attempts, through capture and recapture, through the interminable time spent underground, through the meandering journey through the Taint-darkened wilderness; and now, he looks to buy passage on a northbound ship that will bring him, along with many other Fereldan refugees, to Kirkwall.

“Spare a copper for a poor old man, messere?”

Anders is distracted from his train of thought by a pile of rags propped against the entry to an alleyway. He looks again and notices it has the shape of a person, a long nose and a few strawlike strands of hair protruding from a garment that was once a cloak.

“I’m… very sorry,” Anders says, swallowing as he takes in the pitiful sight, “I don’t have much… I…”

There might not have been need for money in the Circle, but his childhood, growing up in poverty, taught him the value of a sovereign. Then again, in that place, kindness was worth far more than gold. Anders would rather forget most things about his life in the Circle, but he has not forgotten that.

He looks around quickly for people who might be watching before he slips his left boot off his foot.

“Take this,” he murmurs to the old man, shoving his hand down deep into the boot, surfacing with a copper piece. “I know it isn’t much, but…”

He hands it carefully to the old man, who cups it in both hands as though he is afraid he’ll drop it. After a few moments of examining his prize, the man looks up at him, a dimpled smile appearing amid the wrinkles.

“Andraste bless you, messere,” the old man says, beaming. He cannot have more than three teeth in his mouth.

“It’s nothing,” Anders says, staggering as he slips his boot back on. He should still have enough to pay for ship’s passage with what he still has; if not, he can always try pawning the brass earring that is his one reminder of Karl. Either way, at least this old man will go to sleep with food in his belly tonight…

His thought process is interrupted once again. But this time, it is with a blade pressed into the small of his back.

“I’ll be taking the rest, if you don’t mind, _messere_ ,” a cold voice hisses into his ear. The old beggar yelps, getting to his feet to hobble away as Anders is walked into the shadows of the alley, a cold thrill of fear running down his spine. Why hadn’t he foreseen this? Why hadn’t his usual instincts kicked in to warn him?

“You’re making a mistake,” he says, trying to keep his voice even. There’s only a small chance he’ll be able to reach the staff on his back, but maybe…

“Don’t think so, filthy robe,” the voice says, making Anders freeze once more. Of _course_ , he was so stupid… He was wearing Tevinter-style robes beneath a solid cloak, but it had been nearsighted to think that someone wouldn’t notice the feathers, or recognize his disguised staff for what it was. “Didn’t think they allowed your type to keep gold.”

The man’s breath is disgusting, smelling of rot and liquor, and it makes Anders recoil.

“You know I’m a mage,” Anders says, outward calm hiding the fear within. “You still think it’s a good idea to threaten me, when I could easily summon a demon to rip your throat out?” He wouldn’t do such a thing, of course, but this thief has no way of knowing that.

Either way, the thief seems to know the threat is empty, and Anders hears him smirk. “Don’t think you’ll be doing much of that.”

There is a scuffle, and Anders feels the man’s thumb brush against the base of his skull before he is overtaken by pain, burning, the world going dark around the edges as he falls to his hands and knees, screaming.

“Smite,” he gasps, feeling as though his very veins are on fire. “How…?”

“Brother’s a Templar,” says the voice somewhere above him. Anders finds it difficult to focus on his face, but he sees a burst of yellow teeth as the man leers at him. “Learned how to fight from ‘im, but never thought I’d get to use the smite on a real robe…”

Anders groans, cursing his bad luck that he just happened to come up against the one thief in Highever with Templar training, then grunts in pain as the man kicks him in the stomach, making him curl up on his side.

“Course, it all works out, don’t it,” the man says, leaning down so far that Anders can smell the stink of his breath again. He feels a tug as the man rips off Anders’s left boot, hears the clink of silver on the pavement as the coins fall out of it. “Get a few silvers _and_ make one less demon in the world. Must be my lucky day.”

“Nn--!”

He feels the sharp edge of the knife against his throat, and before Anders can struggle, the thief presses down, dragging the blade roughly across. And there is a new pain now, something draining from him, the familiar sensation of lights dimming; and Anders is helpless, gasping, on the ground, hands coming to try and cover the rush of blood pouring from the new gash in his throat, but there is no mana left to heal himself, not after that smite knocked him back – the ground beneath him is staining crimson and he’s – he’s…

“Maker take you,” the thief says with a sarcastic flourish before departing.

Anders, cold, bleeding, dying on the ground, has no retort, no energy left to even cry for help… but there is one thought lingering in his mind even as everything else fades away.

_I never should have come here._

He falls through the black, coming to rest in a cradle of warm light.

\--

And then… then…

Then, Anders finds himself back at the fork in the road between Highever and Amaranthine.

It takes him a moment to register what’s happened. He is on his feet, examining the road sign – Highever to the left, Amaranthine to the right – fingering the base of his throat almost absentmindedly. It barely takes him a moment to realize that he shouldn’t be there at all, that he should be _dead_ , before he loses his footing, landing hard on the ground with the force of his realization.

“Shit,” he hisses to himself, the hand at his throat trembling. “Shit, shit, _shit…_ ”

Highever. The old beggar. The thief. He’d had all his money taken, but he can still feel the familiar stack of coins pressed into the sole of his left foot, the weight reassuring him. And that man had… he’d…

Anders presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. “What the _fuck_ …”

Anders had died in Highever. He was sure of it. He’d _felt_ it. The _schick_ of the knife, the feeling of warm blood gushing down his chest… He remembers every detail now with a clarity that makes him sick to his stomach. But then, how… if he had died, how had he wound up back here? Why could he still feel coins pressing into the sole of his foot? Feeling almost frantic, Anders rips off his boot to see the money for himself, to count it – and sure enough, it is all still there. Six silvers and three coppers. Exactly the amount he’d had before encountering the old man and the thief.

A man killed him for little more than six silvers.

It is so absurd that he starts laughing, haltingly, his fingers curling around the stacks of coins as tears spring to his eyes. It is some combination of his life being worth so little, and the fact that he’s just somehow experienced his own death and lived to tell the tale.

“What the _fuck_!” he says again, this time out of pure bewilderment, the words fitting between hysterical laughter. They are the only words he can think of to describe what he’s just experienced.

Anders has seen the future before. He’s known what to expect in his Harrowing, for example, and he knew Karl would be taken a week before it happened.

But it’s never been so _detailed_ before. Never in his life have any of his visions felt so clear, as though happening to him in real time. This… this feels less like a dream, and more like a memory. Something that has already happened, rather than something that will come to pass.

He calms down after a minute or so, resting by the side of the road beneath the spread of a large tree. He’d hoped his mind was done playing tricks on him, after that year in the cell. He couldn’t hope to stay alive if he couldn’t tell truth from fiction.

But this vision… Highever… it doesn’t feel like another of Anders’s delusions. At the very least, it’s not something he’s comfortable dismissing as such. But does that mean… if it really is the future he’s seeing, does that mean there’s still that same fate lying ahead of him? Will he still meet the fate of dying in an alley?

He looks for a long time at the road sign. Highever to the left. Amaranthine to the right.

“Not if I don’t go to Highever,” he murmurs to himself.

\--

This time, he goes right at the fork.

\--

His old intuition tingles the back of his neck when he’s halfway to Amaranthine, passing what looks like the remains of an old fortress. The familiar… _feeling_ that used to tell him when Templars were on their way.

Anders takes a closer look at the fortress and has an intense blast of déjà vu.

“Vigil’s Keep,” he says, reading the engraving above the main gate aloud. Something in that name rings too familiar for comfort. He presses his fingers to his temples, thinking…

_Remember…_

Images flash through his mind. Templars finding him in Amaranthine. Dragging him back to Kinloch Hold. Stopping for rest in Vigil’s Keep, just in time for the Templars to be torn to pieces by…

Anders blinks, gasping at what’s materialized. This fortress, such as it is, belongs to the Grey Wardens. Not too long from now, he’ll be back here in the custody of the Templars once again, only to be, well, “transferred” to Grey Warden custody when every last Templar dies around him.

Once again, it’s less of a vague intuition telling him what’s to come – it had been that way in the Circle – and more of a certainty, a point on the map that must be avoided at all costs. He stops questioning how he can possibly know exactly what’s to come – something that’s becoming more and more puzzling – and focuses on the important part. The Templars. He can avoid the humiliation and pain of recapture, if only he stays here.

With that in mind, Anders turns away from Amaranthine, and strolls into Vigil’s Keep, right through the main gate.

\--

Darkspawn.

Of course it was darkspawn. They flood up from the cellar once he’s inside the main keep, pinning Anders against a wall, and all he can do is curse, casting fireballs in an attempt to keep them back.

“Typical, Anders,” he grouses at himself. “You remember the Templars in the keep, but not the _man-eating monsters?_ ” Some part of himself particularly given over to black humor wants to quip that they’re more or less the same thing, but that particular reflex is squashed by the need to cast as a genlock comes lunging at him.

And then the tide seems to thin, the sound of clashing blades ringing through the air nearby, arrows flying into the darkspawn to keep them away from him. Anders keeps both hands steady on his staff, fire still fanning out from him to burn that last genlock to ashes, and it’s only when the creature is finally dead that he stops to look up at his new companions. A tall woman wearing the winged helmet of the Grey Wardens, and a small, dark-haired elf clad in fine hunting leathers.

“I didn’t do it,” he tells them reflexively, putting his hands up.

The helmeted warrior frowns. “Didn’t do what?”

“I…” Anders pauses. His own words have confused him. There are no dead Templars here to make excuses for. “I didn’t… er… seduce one of these darkspawn.”

The warrior’s expression has only hardened with suspicion, hand still on the hilt of her sword; but the elf, who has been retrieving arrows from darkspawn corpses, barely reacts.

“Good,” the elf says, idly flicking a bit of black blood off the end of an arrow. “Talk about your surefire ways to get infected by the Taint.”

Anders can’t help but snort with laughter, and the warrior turns reproachfully to her companion.

“Warden-Commander, please!”

“Wait a minute,” Anders says, turning to look more closely at the archer. It didn’t seem possible… “ _You’re_ Warden-Commander Cousland? The Hero of Ferelden?”

The elf scoffs, a single sound that reverbs scornfully off the stone.

“Cousland,” she repeats, returning her arrow to her quiver and getting back to her feet. “I heard that the Orlesian government was spreading rumors that I was the lost Cousland heir, but didn’t think they made it this far east.”

“It is difficult for the common people to understand that elves can be heroes too,” the human warrior says, in what she clearly thinks is a reasonable manner.

“I don’t give a fart if the truth hurts their feelings.” The elf spits into the dirt, and Anders’s respect for her grows at the frankness of her words. “Ayla Tabris,” she says eventually, extending her hand to Anders. “The shem over there is Mhairi.”

Ayla Tabris… why doesn’t the name sound familiar?

“Anders,” he says, shaking her hand rather than ask himself unanswerable questions. Try as he might, he can’t stop picturing the famed Hero of Ferelden as a human warrior, a man with eyes as blue and cold as ice that could stare through the soul of anyone who got too close. Could an image that clear really come from exaggerated, myth-like stories he’d heard among refugees during his time on the road?

“Anyhow, Anders,” the Hero of Ferelden tells him, startling him out of his thoughts, “you should get out of here. You’re a bit squishy for work like this.” She starts to move past him, but not before he notices the way she’s limping.

“Wait,” he says, making her pause. “Would you like me to heal your leg first?” Tabris turns back, her eyes looking almost scandalized in the low light of the room. “I’m good for more than just fireballs,” he adds with a shrug.

“How much?” she says immediately.

“I don’t charge for healing,” Anders says before he can remember opening his mouth. Another reflex. She sits on a crate, violently shrugging off his attempt to help her do so, and he begins to examine her. The damage is relatively minor, a graze from an enemy longsword, and he has it healed before she can voice a single objection. “You might need my help again before you reach the top, though.”

And if memory serves, one or both of them definitely will.

Tabris just keeps looking at him, no longer suspicious, but still curious, as though she can’t quite grasp the measure of him. Then she sighs, getting to her feet.

“Come on, then.”

\--

The battle rages on for several hours. They’re joined by one of Tabris’s old companions, a particularly odorous dwarf named Oghren; and Anders can barely keep up with healing the three of them. Somehow he isn’t particularly surprised by the talking darkspawn on the roof – it’s like another story he’d heard long ago, only to resurface now – but he feigns shock along with the others.

He’s too busy mulling over the mysteries of the past several days – his death in Highever, the tall ice-eyed Warden-Commander he can almost remember – to add yet another to the pile, at any rate.

“Anders.” He looks with surprise into the dark brown eyes of Ayla Tabris. “You didn’t have to stay with us,” she says, rubbing at her wrist. “You had no reason to help me and the shem. You were there by accident.”

Anders chuckles. “Accident?” he repeats. Nothing about him being at Vigil’s Keep feels particularly accidental to him.

She shrugs. “I mean, I assumed you were hiding in there from Templars or something. Right?”

“Um… or something,” he agrees, though he’s distracted by Mhairi’s eyes over Tabris’s shoulder, taking stock of Anders, looking for things to accuse him of. He shouldn’t be as familiar with that look as he is. “Look, don’t worry about it, Tabris. It worked out, right? And, you’re welcome.”

She stammers. “I wasn’t…! Fucking shem, at least let me finish thanking you first!”

“Oh!” Anders offers her a small, teasing smile. “I didn’t realize I was being awarded such an honor. Go ahead, then. Tell me how wonderful I am.”

“Nngh…” He’s never seen anyone’s face go quite as red as Tabris’s, some combination of fury and embarrassment. But before they can continue, there’s a blast of horn in the distance, and a column of gold appears in the main gateway.

“Well, look who finally showed up,” Oghren hiccups, tottering in that direction.

“His Majesty…” Mhairi breathes, taking a few reverent steps forward as the foremost rider dismounts, removing his golden helmet. Curious, Anders gets closer too.

The newcomer waves his arm in a wide arc over his head. “Hallo! Ayla! I was just stopping by to congratulate the Grey Wardens on their new outpost, but it sounds like I just missed quite a bit of action!”

“Just like you to sleep through a battle, Al,” Tabris shouts back, and Anders notes the familiarity, just as he takes a closer look at the man wearing the armor of the king of Ferelden.

He’s never seen him before.

“That was _once_. One time. And if you’d sent someone other than Shale to wake me… oh, it’s useless. My point is, I’m glad to see you’re all right.” The unfamiliar, though handsome, man smiles in a friendly manner he wouldn’t expect to see from a king.

Anders is almost shocked to see Tabris return the smile, although with more reservation. “I’m always all right, Alistair,” she says, almost challenging.

The king rolls his eyes fondly. “I know, I know.”

“Your Majesty!” Ah, wonderful, there it was. The Templar sword cutting through the King’s personal guard. “We must arrest this dangerous criminal!”

“Come now,” the king said, “the dwarf’s a bit off, but he’s not dangerous…”

“She means me,” Anders says with a sigh, back in familiar territory. Of course the king had a few Templars in his personal guard, well-attuned to spotting apostates. How they planned to prove he was dangerous when there was no dead Templar guard around him, of course, was sure to be interesting.

“Mages must remain in the Circle for their own safety,” the Templar recites, so mechanically that Anders could have done it along with her. “This man regularly puts himself and innocent citizens at risk with his stunts…”

“Right, and I’m not a citizen?” Anders demands back, feeling his hackles rise. “Are you actually saying it’s _dangerous_ that I want to see the sky now and then?” He shakes his head. “Unbelievable. You’ll find ammunition anywhere, won’t you?”

“It is my duty as a Knight of Andraste to bring this man to justice…”

Anders is about to make a crack that the woman doesn’t know the first _thing_ about Justice when Tabris speaks.

“Lady,” she says, getting between Anders and the Templar, “shut up.”

The Templar’s mouth instantly snaps shut, though her skin turns the color of sour milk. Mhairi gasps somewhere behind the group, while Oghren chuckles. The king, on the other hand, simply raises an eyebrow.

“Ayla?” he says, opening the floor to her.

Tabris looks back at Anders as though trying to decide something.

“Anders,” she says, “tell me again what you were doing at Vigil’s Keep.”

It was a question he’d danced around earlier because without his Templar guardians, there simply wasn’t a good reason for him to be in a Warden fortress. “I walked right in because I was going to be dragged back here six hours later in chains and wanted to save the trip” is the truth, though no one would buy it. “I’ve been able to see the future most of my life and it’s making me do increasingly weird shit” makes him sound completely mad, even though, for all he knows, he is. There’s only one answer he can give.

“I came here to join the Grey Wardens,” he finally says, crossing his arms defiantly at the Templar. It feels less like a conscious decision, and more like something Anders has already done. It’s familiar, and it _feels_ right, and somewhere Anders thinks that this, counterintuitive though it may be, must be the path that brings him and Karl back together at last.

“Good,” Tabris says, turning to the king. “Then I invoke the Right of Conscription.”

There’s some bickering after that, mostly the Templar asking the king to at least allow her to station some Templars at Vigil’s Keep to keep an eye on Anders, a request which the king appears to ignore by pretending to be very interested in the moonlight reflecting off his gauntlet. Anders barely pays attention, as the scene that’s just unfolded has made an old memory surface. No – _two_ old memories.

One, similar to this one, where he was conscripted immediately, without being asked. Another where he was let go, released back into Templar hands without so much as a thank-you for fighting darkspawn. And both of his memories involve the ice-eyed man, with an elegant woman where the king is now.

Anders shakes his head, feeling more confused than ever. He remembers this place, but not Tabris, and he keeps seeing a man that doesn’t exist, and he shouldn’t be able to remember Vigil’s Keep _anyway_ since he’s never been here. Is it too much to ask that his life make sense?

He barely notices that the king’s party has left, clanking away into the distance, before he rounds on Tabris.

“Would you have given me up if I’d said anything else?” he wants to know. “Made me go with her?”

Tabris seems surprised by the question, though she carefully schools her features after a moment.

“You’re being paranoid,” she says dismissively. “You’re here now, and that’s that.”

Anders frowns, studying her features.

“You wouldn’t have,” he finally decides, a smile slowly blooming across his face. “Not like he did.” It’s something he feels so certain of, with no real basis for it; but the knowledge that he’s about to be safe from Templars forever thanks to this woman makes his chest swell all the same.

Tabris looks even more confused than before, until she snorts.

“Well, don’t thank me just yet,” she says, starting to lead the way back to the main keep. “I haven’t exactly done you a favor.”

“That’s all right,” Anders says, his memory already supplying him with images of his successful Joining. “I think I’ll get on fine here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay on this chapter! I've been really sick with pneumonia for the last week or so, and only just got the energy back to actually type things (even though I'm still bedridden). It'll probably be a good couple of weeks until the next chapter goes up, but I'm really excited about it, so hopefully it won't take long for me to write. ^^
> 
> As always, leave a comment below if you enjoyed or have a question, or you can do the same at my Tumblr, @phoenixrei! Thank you so much for sticking with me!!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tabris takes the gang to the Blackmarsh, where someone has been waiting for Anders...

The mud of the Blackmarsh sucks at his new boots, threatening to pull them off his feet unless he steps carefully.

“Watch your step,” Tabris calls over her shoulder as she scouts ahead. “Blackmarsh’s a nasty place. But the sooner we find Kristoff, the sooner we can go take a nice, hot bath.”

“Only if you draw the water, Chief,” Anders responds, making their group snort derisively, recognizing his flirt as nothing but a gentle rib.

He’s fallen back on jokes and flirting, something he was well known for back in the Circle; although it’s taken on a different meaning for Anders in the Wardens. Here, it doesn’t feel like nearly as much of a front as it used to, instead pouring out of him with ease. It feels like he’s been given a real chance, to invent himself, to experience life as a free mage – even if that second bit comes with the long leash of a Warden’s uniform.

But even his newfound exuberance at finding some small measure of freedom and safety has been painfully short-lived.

Even now, carefully picking his way through the slime of the marsh, Anders can’t stop thinking about the people he left behind in the Circle.

It was terrible to say so, but they hadn’t crossed his mind the whole time he’d been on the run. He hadn’t even noticed the lack of Templars on his tail, chalking his lack of trouble up to good luck, or to his strange ability to know when Templars were on their way.

It was Tabris, two days after his Joining, who had finally told him the truth.

Nearly a week had passed since she’d broken the news to him. The uprising that Uldred had instigated. The demons pouring in through the Veil. The carnage that had unfolded. Mages – children – his _friends_ – treated worse than animals, locked in and abandoned to the cruelty of blood mages and demons.

Tabris had managed to stop it, she’d told him then, seeing Anders’s face. She’d fought her way through the Fade itself, defeating the blood mages and staying the Templars’ hands. She’d eventually taken the surviving mages on as allies to fight the archdemon, with First Enchanter Irving commanding them. But Anders finds her so-called good news small comfort.

How many friends had he left behind to die? How many had suffered? How many had died at Templars’ hands, or Uldred and his blood mages’? How many had welcomed demons into their souls out of fear, only to be torn apart from the inside? Why hadn’t he seen something, done something – _anything_ – to save them?

In the past, his visions had showed him things as trivial as strangers’ Harrowings, or details as small as what ledges to plant his feet on as he scaled down the Tower. And yet here, he’d _failed._ He hadn’t gotten so much as a glimpse of this calamity, the massacre looming on the horizon as he blithely made his final escape.

What good was seeing the future, escaping the dangers that lay ahead on his own path, if he was powerless to help others in the same way?

“Hey.” Oghren’s growl somewhere near his elbow distracts him from his spiral of self-pity. “Eyes open, sparklefingers. You’re the only one of us who knows anything about all this Fade shit.” He reaches up to thump Anders hard between the shoulder blades, making him stumble even more.

“Right,” Anders mumbles, wobbling to right himself. “Fade shit.” Tabris had warned their little party before departure that the Blackmarsh had certain locations where the Veil was quite thin, a fact that seemed to have Oghren more on edge than Anders had ever seen him. At least, he thinks so, since the dwarf seems to be less drunk than usual, eyes nervously darting around the swamp.

“My father used to tell tales about this place,” comments their fourth companion, a tall, lean archer named Nathaniel Howe. He had been Joined the day after Anders, a would-be assassin of Tabris who she’d pressed into Warden service as punishment for his crime. “He would try to frighten us children with ghost stories of the Blackmarsh.”

Tabris, far ahead of the three of them, merely grunts in what sounds like disgust, and Anders sees Nate’s eyes narrow as he looks at her back. Since Nate had survived the Joining, Anders had never seen her speak directly to him, nor him to her. He supposed he could hardly blame either of them, given that Tabris had murdered Nate’s father, a nobleman much like the ones who had made Tabris’s life in Denerim a living Void. With such a history between them, it’s no wonder the two of them are incapable of being civil to one another – not that Anders can really blame either of them.

There are times, in fact, when Anders wonders why Tabris had kept the other archer alive at all.

They are approaching the top of a small hill, where a shriveled log lies partly submerged in the muck. At least, that’s what Anders thinks he sees, until he notices a glint of gold from a chain around the neck, the tattered remains of what used to be a Warden’s uniform draped over the log’s back…

No…

Tabris has stopped dead beside it, an empty expression on her face. “Looks like we found Kristoff,” she says, her voice flat as she takes in the sight of their lost man, who has clearly been dead for some time, rotting in the peat. She unceremoniously drops to her knees to try and turn him over, but just then, Anders feels something _tear_ nearby, feels the vibrations in his skin as the Veil stretches, pushing into their reality, and before he can so much as cast a counterspell, a darkspawn emissary has appeared in their midst.

“You,” says the darkspawn, and Anders is unsurprised to learn this one can talk as well. A long, gnarled finger points in Tabris’s direction. “The Mistress does not have need of you, yesss. Leave this place.”

“Screw that,” Tabris says, already on her feet with her bow drawn before the rest of them have even reacted. “Did you do this? Did you kill him?” She gestures with her head to Kristoff’s body, still lying prone in the mud.

“Enough!” the emissary hisses. “The Mistress does not want you! Away!”

The darkspawn waves its arms, and before Anders knows it, he is falling through darkness.

\--

He opens his eyes, but is not quite certain he is awake.

He lies flat on his back, unmoving, while the crimson mist of the Fade swirls all around him. The gangrened landscape shifts as though it is alive, practically breathing with the swell of the scarlet winds.

Anders has lost his fear of the Fade years ago – a byproduct of his spirit healing studies – but he cannot shake a feeling of unease as he carefully gets to his feet, trying to get his bearings. Where are his companions? What demon has made this corner its demesne?

He remembers one of his earliest lessons, given by a grizzled old senior enchanter when Anders was still too small to hold a proper staff. Back before he’d adopted his name. _There is no sense you can trust in the Fade_ , the old woman had warned him. _Demons will warp your sight, use it to their advantage. Trust nothing but your instincts. You must_ feel _your way through the Fade._

And so Anders does now, keeping his eyes open but allowing his perception to expand, reaching with his magic to touch the energies of nearby wisps and spirits. The more he focuses on this, the clearer the landscape becomes, the ground on his feet no longer shifting. He begins walking, hoping to come across his companions.

“Nate? Oghren? Tabris! Where are you?”

His voice echoes around him, bouncing off the fog, and he grapples for his staff, knowing he must be attracting every wraith in the area with all his shouting. Yet miraculously, he is left in peace, nothing crossing his path as he slowly picks his way along the path.

It is not long before he comes to a gate, a lone figure standing guard before it.

He can’t yet see details of the figure, but he can feel its energy. A spirit, he notes with some relief, not a demon. But this spirit is a strong one. A…

…A familiar one?

He slows his approach, his magic and his instincts still reaching out to the spirit, feeling out its aura, as he tries to recognize it. There are a few specific spirits of compassion he uses most often to heal in his work, but this one is none of them, and it is not compassion he senses when he focuses on the spirit. He cannot remember where or when he has met this spirit before, and yet…

And yet, he cannot shake the sense he has met it before.

He has come to a stop about a league away from the spirit, who has sensed his presence, turning toward him with blue-white eyes that shine through the mist, like cats’ eyes in the darkness.

“Anders.” The spirit’s voice is deep, resonating somewhere in Anders’s chest. “I wondered when you would arrive, my friend.”

The spirit’s words reach him – but they make no _sense_. He finds himself gripping his staff tighter as the spirit approaches, the mist parting around him.

“Who are you?” Anders demands, raising his staff level with the spirit’s chest. “How do you know my name?”

Then the spirit comes into view, and Anders’s staff falls from his hands.

He is looking at _himself_.

No… not quite himself, on closer look. The spirit has warped Anders’s image just a little, changed so the eyes are sunken and sightless, bright light still shining through eyes that cannot see. The hair, too, is longer, the face unshaved; and the spirit’s facsimile of clothing resembles nothing so much as rags, bandages wound around the arms and feathered pauldrons wilting on the shoulders.

But despite these changes, there is no mistaking it. His doppelganger still looks at him, openly, _pleased_ , and it makes Anders take a few involuntary steps back.

“What…” He finds he’s shaking. “What… by the _Maker_ …” He can’t find the words to voice his fear. “What _is_ this? Why do you…”

Something pricks at the edge of his consciousness, the familiar black aura of fear demons, and he knows he’s drawing them to him with how he feels, but he can’t… He keeps _looking_ at this spirit who’s taken his face, who keeps approaching him with an expression like concern, and he finds he can’t wrap his mind around it.

“Anders.” The spirit is more insistent now, still coming closer. “Why are you afraid? Do you not recall our promise?”

Promise? Something prickles at Anders’s memory and is gone just as quickly.

“I-I don’t know you,” he stammers, shaking his head back and forth even as it starts to ache. “I don’t… oh Maker… my h-head…”

For no sooner have the words left his mouth than a burst of pain materializes right behind his eye, stabbing and twisting, and he’s doubled over, clutching his head, just as a shriek materializes beside him, ready to claw him to shreds –

But the spirit is faster.

“Anders, keep back!” he bellows, right as he tosses Anders’s staff to his feet. Anders tentatively opens his eyes… the pain makes everything appear haloed, shards of light framing every inch of the landscape, but he still sees his other self fight off the shriek, beating it back with a shield before delivering the final blow with a massive sword that has materialized from nowhere. He is not sure if the spirit is delivering a smite along with the physical strike, or if the pain in his head is simply making the spirit glow brighter.

And there’s something about _this_ , him cowering behind this spirit as it protects him, that feels familiar, and at the same time, wrong. Like an old set of robes that doesn’t fit right anymore, stretched out and worn.

Their enemy is destroyed, but the spirit remains still, panting, his back to Anders, still holding the sword and shield that both seem to be made of lightning. There is a moment where neither of them seems to know what to say.

“I’m… sorry,” Anders says eventually. His fear must have summoned the shriek to their location; he breathes slowly, trying to get it under control so they might both be safe. The pain that had blossomed is slowly fading away, leaving only a gentle throbbing. “I didn’t… you… you look…” The right word materializes out of nowhere. “Different,” he finishes, to his own surprise. “You look different…”

The spirit turns, looking carefully at him.

“I _am_ different,” he acknowledges. “But I am still myself.”

Anders doesn’t know how to absorb this. But before he can ask further questions, the spirit speaks again.

“Anders.” The seriousness of the spirit’s tone attracts the mage’s full attention. “Do you know me?”

“Yes,” Anders says, then backtracks. “N-no, I…”

”The cat in the box,” the spirit interrupts, speaking urgently. “Is it alive, or is it dead?”

“ _What?!_ ” There must be some hidden meaning to the question, he feels sure of it, and yet he is too distracted by the idea that a cat’s life might be at risk. “What cat? That isn’t _funny_ , Justice!”

No sooner has he said the name than he claps a hand over his mouth. That name… how did he know it? Yet the closer he looks at his spirit-twin, the longer he remains connected to his aura, the more certain he is. This is a spirit of justice. And not just _a_ spirit of justice. This is… _his…_ Justice.

The spirit – Justice – for his part, simply looks grimly satisfied.

“So it is you,” he says. “I had hoped you might remember something.” He crouches, eyes level with Anders’s where he’s still sprawled on the ground. “I have waited here for your return, my dear friend.” Justice smiles again, more warmly than Anders might expect. “It has been… a long time.”

“Justice,” Anders repeats, then shakes his head wearily again. He doesn’t remember half as much as the spirit seems to, and yet… “I don’t understand. How do I know you?”

“Anders! Hey, Anders!”

This time his name comes not from Justice, but from the fog. Tabris is calling out to him, echoed by Nate and Oghren. Anders can sense that it’s really them and not a demon’s trick, and Justice seems to sense the same, for he straightens up.

“I nearly forgot the others,” he says. “It seems we must still fight the Baroness after all.” He extends a hand to Anders to help him up. “Let us speak again when the battle has ended. It would seem we have much to discuss.”

Anders looks at the spirit’s hand, identical to his own, then snorts. “No kidding.”

He takes his hand, and Anders is less surprised than he should be to find that this martial spirit of Justice feels like home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I feel the need to give this heads-up: as you can likely guess from the irregular postings in the last month or so, I can't guarantee regular updates from here on in, especially since I have school and... school... starting. However, I am very protective of my writing time, so I'm confident that even with my life getting a little (a lot) hectic, I won't be letting this fic drop off the face of the earth (especially now that it's getting kind of good! In my mind, anyway). Thanks for everyone who's sticking with me! <3
> 
>  
> 
> [tumblr](http://phoenixrei.tumblr.com)


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anders frets and grumbles, and Justice finally decides to open up.

It bothers Anders that no one notices anything strange about Justice.

Really, there’s quite a lot about Justice that bothers him; but it’s beyond strange that no one else _notices._

The five of them continue tromping through the Fade, exploring and fighting demons together, but no one has yet mentioned the uncanny resemblance Justice has to Anders. It can’t possibly be that none of them have seen, can it? Or are they all simply playing some kind of trick on him?

He decides to test his theory with Nathaniel.

“So,” he says, sidling up to the archer, “rather good-looking spirit we picked up, wouldn’t you say, Nate?”

Nate only gives him a strange look. “He’s wearing a helmet,” he says, casting another glance at Justice as he walks alongside them. “He seems fit to act as a warrior, but he is just that. A faceless warrior in armor. Not exactly my cup of tea.”

“Hah _,_ ” Anders laughs, though he looks carefully at Justice again. Nope, the spirit still looks exactly as Anders remembers, like an older, more homeless version of himself. No helmet in sight. “Quit fucking with me, Nate.”

“You’ll know when I’m fucking with you,” comes the mild reply, before Nate darts far ahead, scouting for the party. A low, dirty laugh comes from behind Anders.

“What, you like what you see over there?” Oghren grunts, gesturing to Justice. “That normal, mages finding spirits ‘good-looking’?”

Anders nearly brings up desire demons, but he feels too tired to get into a discussion of the intricacies of the Fade with someone like Oghren, especially when he still has so many questions about Justice’s presence. The bewildering conversation they’d had earlier. His appearance and why only Anders seems to notice it. The reason why Anders had already known his name before he’d introduced himself.

“Come to our tent tonight and find out,” Anders says instead, waggling his eyebrows at the dwarf, who lets out a guffaw before moving along. As soon as Oghren has left the pair of them alone, Anders darts to his doppelganger’s side.

“Spirits can’t use guile,” he hisses in the spirit’s ear. “They can’t lie, or trick mortals. It’s not in their nature. So what in the Void is this? Why can’t they see you the way I do?”

“I do not understand what you refer to.”

“You…!” Anders bites back a curse, looking around to be sure their companions aren’t paying too much attention. “You look like me,” he says in a low voice, trying to stay calm. “I want to know why.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Justice look at him in surprise. “Do I?”

“You didn’t know?!”

“I did not.” The spirit seems to muse over this. “I cannot see the way you can. I have never seen my face, nor yours; I operate in the Fade by sensing the mana of other beings. It allows me to know their location, feel the shapes of their souls, but not view the details of their appearance.” Justice continues to look thoughtful. “Mortals, however…”

“They tell us not to trust our eyes in the Fade,” Anders says, frowning as his mind starts to work. “The others never had Circle training, so… maybe they see what they want to?”

“Perhaps,” Justice agrees. “The others in our party expect to see me as a simple spirit of justice, and so that is what they see.”

“But I…”

“You are different.” Anders looks up at Justice, whose features have softened. “Though perhaps not consciously, you know of our… connection, and so you see me for who I am.”

Anders grunts in displeasure. “You’ve said a lot of creepy things to me since I met you,” he grumbles to the spirit, “but that’s by far the creepiest.”

It’s a strange experience for Anders to be on the receiving end of one of his own withering looks, as Justice glares impatiently at him. And the fact that the spirit seems annoyed with Anders is strange in itself, since spirits aren’t generally capable of displaying more than one emotion.

Or at least, most spirits aren’t.

Justice is muttering to himself. “What is that expression that he always…? Yes. ‘Hear me out.’ After the battle, I shall explain, I promise.”

“And what if I don’t want to listen?” he demands, crossing his arms. “What happens then?”

Justice considers this. “Nothing,” he finally says. “Nothing at all will happen. That is why you will ask.”

Anders laughs, though he feels strange again, seeing how well this stranger knows him.

“Could just write all this off as a weird dream,” he challenges. “We’re in the Fade, after all. Maybe… you’re my subconscious.”

Justice laughs too; it sounds stilted, as though he’s still learning how. “I suppose I am, in a way,” he says, and just when Anders thinks Justice has reached his limit for nonsensical statements, he goes and outdoes himself. “But Anders, soon we shall leave the Fade, and you shall no longer be able to pretend I am a simple dream.”

“Um… r-right,” Anders says, arms falling to his sides. How does the spirit do that, make him feel so off-footed with a single phrase? He chooses to focus on his final sentence rather than sort the rest out. “Wait… ‘we’? How are you going to get out of this place?”

Justice raises his eyes to the sky, the red and purple vortex of the Fade. A peculiar nostalgia flashes in his eyes before he closes them with a sigh.

“That particular question,” Justice sighs, “shall answer itself soon enough.”

\--

And so it does.

Tabris finds them a way back out of the Fade, only to find that Justice has been dragged along with them, caught in the witch’s vortex that sent them all back. Oghren all but screams as Kristoff’s reanimated corpse gets to its feet, Justice’s distinctive low voice emanating from stiff, dry lips. Nathaniel, too, looks horrified, and even unflappable Tabris looks perturbed.

“Anders,” she hisses, sidling away from their companions, “make him go _away_.”

“I can’t,” Anders says, and he finds himself looking at the spirit. Justice, inside Kristoff’s remains, has eyes that are crusted with cataracts, just as blind as he’d been in the Fade; yet still, he looks directly at Anders, expectant. Waiting.

It shouldn’t surprise him, given how much Justice seemed to have known about him in the Fade. But it makes something click for him that hadn’t before. Justice _knew._ He’d known this would happen.

The same way Anders knows, sometimes, when things are about to go to shit.

“He’s… become trapped on this side of the Fade,” Anders stammers, aware of his companions’ eyes on him. He knows of no real precedence for this, spirits getting caught on the wrong side of the Veil, and yet he still somehow knows his answer is true. “He doesn’t have a way to get back…”

Justice starts speaking directly to Tabris then, some sort of speech about how he’ll serve the Wardens in Kristoff’s place, but Anders is barely listening. Whatever Justice really is… whatever his connection to Anders must be, he can’t just ignore the fact that their paths have crossed. Nothing Justice had said to him in the Fade made any sense… but damned if his curiosity wasn’t getting the better of him.

He lingers behind as the other three set out, the former Warden’s corpse swaying on its feet.

“Fine,” he mutters in Justice’s direction. “I’ll let you say your piece.”

Justice simply nods, as if he’d expected this. “The usual place, then. Once we return to Vigil’s Keep.”

Anders doesn’t even bother asking how Justice already knows the name of the Warden fortress. “The fuck is ‘the usual place’?”

Justice looks down at him, rotting face inscrutable.

“Try to remember,” is all he says before leaving down the path.

Anders wonders why he bothers trusting Justice.

\--

By the time they get back to the Keep three days later, Anders is beyond pissed.

He’d avoided spending any time alone with Justice after their first few chats, not particularly needing any more cryptic bones to chew on. The spirit, too, had given him space, instead speaking with their other companions when he spoke at all. Justice had donned a cracked helmet at Tabris’s insistence, which helped warm them up collectively to the rotting, walking, talking corpse in their midst. Still, even though Justice no longer looked like Anders in the real world, the spirit’s aura still gave him the chills, just from the memory of it.

And then there were times… sitting around the campfire, telling stories, when Justice would laugh that wheezy laugh of his out of nowhere, catching Anders’s eye as though sharing a private joke of some sort. Always the most innocuous things, too, like Oghren sharing a particularly bawdy story about a night out in Orzammar, or Tabris commenting on the politics of alienage life. It _infuriated_ Anders whenever Justice would do this, because whatever joke Justice hoped to share with him, whatever connection he hoped to establish… Anders couldn’t understand it. And Justice either didn’t know or didn’t care that he didn’t understand.

And still with every step on the road home, Anders had tried to do as Justice told him. _Try to remember._ Remember _what?_

Back in the Keep, they knock the mud off their clothes, and Anders is amazed at how much better he feels with a clean tunic on, his hair newly washed and tied back out of his face. He catches sight of himself in a darkened mirror, Karl’s earring dangling stylishly off his ear, face clean-shaven and fresh… and he finds he has to look away. It reminds him too much of how Justice had looked in the Fade, that tired version of himself with the sad, sad eyes.

A “connection,” Justice had said. Was that supposed to be Anders’s future?

The idea makes him shudder.

\--

The “usual place,” as it turns out, is the keep’s dusty, unused chapel.

This place is almost always empty. Tabris is far from Andrastian, and anyway, she says there’s no use fixing up a chapel when Vigil’s Keep’s cellar still opens directly into the Deep Roads. But Anders sees Nathaniel in here sometimes, praying with the seneschal before breakfast; and the staff here at the Keep keeps the fire in the large fireplace at the front of the room burning, although this late at night the fire has begun to die down.

Despite that, the chapel is still, all in all, a dismal place, still filthy from decades of disuse. Dusty wooden benches are haphazardly lined up facing a moldering statue of Andraste, which is surrounded by dozens of lit candle stubs. They cast frightening shadows onto the holy woman’s face.

Justice’s back is to him, seated on the frontmost bench.

“Did you remember where to meet me,” the spirit asks, still not turning around, “or simply guess?”

It’s the latter, but Anders chooses to ignore the question. “So, here we are, the usual place,” Anders says, his voice echoing off the stone walls. “Whatever that means.”

“It means precisely as it sounds.” Justice doesn’t even flinch as Anders throws himself bodily onto the seat beside him. “This is the place you and I always meet.”

“We’ve met _once_ , Justice,” Anders huffs. “Three days ago. In the Fade. Just in case _you_ don’t remember.”

Justice smiles sympathetically.

“I’m sorry, Anders,” he says. “But you’re wrong. We have met at least once before.”

“Wh-what?” Anders’s curiosity is warring with his inclination to be angry with Justice, to challenge him. “When? What happened?”

“I do not know.” Anders feels himself deflate even as Justice frowns, thoughtfully. “That is what we must determine before we go forward again, I suppose.”

Anders shakes his head. “Okay, stop,” he says, holding up his hands. “You said you’d answer all my questions here, right? So… start from the beginning, okay?”

“That is precisely the problem, my friend,” Justice says, still frowning. “Right now, this moment, we are _at_ the beginning. Determining which beginning, however, is far more complex.” He looks at Anders, and grimaces. “I apologize. This is unhelpful.”

Anders bites back a sarcastic “you think?” But before he can formulate his next question, Justice asks one of his own.

“Anders, how much do you know of how time operates in the Fade?”

“Huh?” Anders thinks for a moment, struggling to remember tomes he hadn’t touched since he was an angry teenager, less focused on books than on his freedom. “Not much, I guess. I thought time didn’t really exist in the Fade.”

“Ahh…” Justice leans forward, hands resting on his thighs. “Then please, allow me to explain.”

The corpse lurches to his feet, hobbling to the hearth in the corner of the room. Curious in spite of himself, Anders follows him.

“Here,” Justice murmurs before reaching directly into the embers, scattering smoldering coals and handfuls of warm ash across the floor.

“D-doesn’t that hurt you?” Anders can’t help but ask, already gathering healing magic in his fingertips.

Justice scoffs. “This body is not mine. Pain cannot trouble me. Now pay attention, Anders.” The spirit draws a straight line in the ashes with his finger, heedless of the fragments that still glow red-hot. “This is time in your world, yes? Past, present, and then future. A single, straight line, traveling only in one direction.”

“Er… sure,” Anders says, kneeling across from Justice. “Easy enough.”

“Easy,” Justice agrees, “but not entirely accurate.”

He draws a few more lines with his finger, jagged offshoots from the straight line that spiral in all directions, until the line resembles more of a web.  “Time,” Justice continues as he draws, “is nowhere near as straightforward as mortals believe. It is, perhaps, more like a river, with its creeks and lakes and waterfalls, than like your straight line. One common beginning, but infinite possible endings. Not one history, but many histories.”

Anders frowns at the new drawing, trying to absorb this. Many histories? He stares at the glowing web on the floor, trying to make sense of what Justice is telling him.

“Okay,” he says after a moment’s thought, “except that rivers flow the opposite way. Thousands of creeks coming together to form one river.” He indicates what he means, though his finger hovers a safe distance from the parts that still burn.

Justice lets out a single hoarse laugh. “Every time I explain this, you bring that up,” he says, shaking his head fondly. “It’s just like you, somehow. Believing any choice you make will still lead to the correct future.”

“I don’t know what that means, so I’ll pretend you didn’t say that,” Anders says, unable to keep the annoyance out of his voice. “But, okay. Rivers. Creeks. Go on.”

“Each juncture of the river represents a moment when a mortal makes a decision,” Justice continues, drawing a more basic Y-shaped diagram off to one side. “For instance… let us imagine that you were presented with a choice to go to the Blackmarsh with Ayla Tabris.” One desiccated finger taps the base of the Y. “You could have decided to go…” The finger tracks the left-hand side of the letter. “…Or to remain.” The finger tracks right this time, trailing in the dust.

“Okay,” Anders says, still following. “Makes sense, I guess. Different choices create different outcomes… So, if I’d stayed here, you’d still be in the Fade?”

“No,” Justice says with the smallest of sighs. “Had you remained here, I would still have been cast out of the Fade along with Ayla Tabris and the rest of her party. Such an event has been predetermined by forces beyond your or my control.” A pause as they both digest the idea. “It is simply that you and I would not have met at the gate; but rather, we would be meeting here, in this chapel, for the first time.”

“And how can you be sure of that?” Anders looks up, measured in his reaction.

Justice simply smiles, though he looks a bit sad. “Don’t you remember, old friend?”

“I…” Anders massages his temples. “You keep asking me if I ‘remember,’ or _what_ I remember, but I can’t. I can’t remember anything.”

“Think back, Anders,” Justice says, leaning forward. “In the Fade. How did you know my name?”

“I don’t think I _did_ ,” he says, though he strains to think. “Not consciously… I remember looking at you – well, sensing you – and thinking… ‘Ah, so there’s Justice.’” He looks up at the spirit, feeling more lost than ever. “Are you trying to say we’ve… met in one of the other branches?”

“One, at the very least.”

“Shit,” Anders murmurs, raking his hand through his hair. This is it, then. The key to all the things he’s seen that haven’t happened yet. The reasons he remembers things that _never_ happened. Somehow, some way, he must have caught a glimpse of these other histories. His supposed madness must be fragments of memory left over from the journey.

Somehow, he almost prefers thinking those memories were delusions. It was much simpler, at any rate.

“So… you know me from another time,” he says, pulling out of his reverie to look up at the spirit. “That’s how you recognized me in the Fade, right?”

Justice nods slowly, still carefully studying Anders’s expression.

“Quite possibly more than one,” he says. “Truthfully, I have lost count of the number of times I have met you… which may not be the number of times you have met me.”

“Because of… timelines?” Anders guesses, and is rewarded with a nod.

“There is a version of you, and a version of me, in every timeline,” Justice explains. “Without putting too fine a point on it, it’s very possible that I have met different versions of you in my travels.” He scratches his chin thoughtfully. “Although,” he muses aloud, “there is something _very_ familiar about you. I feel I would have met you before, even had you not known my name.”

Other versions of himself? Anders groans, holding his head.

“Right, well, let’s put a pin in _that_ ,” he says. There’s only so much he can absorb at once. “So there’s a starting point, yeah? The, uh, beginning of the river, or whatever? What’s that supposed to be?”

“That is… here,” Justice says, looking around the chapel. “This moment in time is our earliest common bond. And so we must always come here, even if first we meet in the Fade. If we do not, we risk losing our way back.”

“Back where?”

“Back _here_ ,” Justice repeats. “For our purposes, this moment is the beginning of our mission. Should we… fail… it is easiest to begin again from here.”

“Like retracing your steps,” Anders muses.

“Yes,” Justice says slowly. “Over and over and over again…”

He trails off, and Anders finds himself looking at the diagrams in the ash before him. Branching timelines, like infinite forks in the road… Infinite choices, creating infinite lifetimes…

It still all makes his head spin a little, even as, the more he thinks of it, the more it explains everything. The vision of Karl being taken, weeks before it had happened. His memories of the ice-eyed man who didn’t seem to exist here. The Highever incident. All these little unexplained fragments, slotting back into place in his memory. But still...

“Why can’t I remember everything?” he finds himself asking. “All those times you say we’ve gone back and forth in the timelines… I can’t remember them. I can’t remember _you,_ but you seem to know everything about me…”

“Remembering always was more difficult for you,” Justice says, another sad little sigh in his voice. “You were not at fault. The leap back to the beginning was always a bit… traumatic for you.”

“Since I’m not a spirit?”

“Well…” Justice hesitates. “…Often, it was because you died.”

That sentence dangles in the air between them, heavy with the things Justice isn’t saying. Anders should be more shocked by the news that he’s dead, that Justice has seen him die… but it feels like something he already knew.

Justice is still talking. “Bringing you back to the beginning, back _here_ … the soul comes willingly, but the memories sometimes get… lost, or buried. With the correct triggers, they can sometimes reemerge, but...” Justice shakes his head. “The memories of your own death… perhaps they are better left behind, where they cannot touch you. I cannot understand how you ever bore such a thing.”

“Can’t have been so bad,” Anders shrugs, though he’s unable to keep himself from gingerly touching his throat, remembering the feeling of a dagger slicing through it. He shivers. “Am I supposed to be dead, then?”

“’Supposed’ is… quite a difficult word. In some times that run parallel to ours, you are already dead.”

“Highever,” Anders murmurs to himself, and while Justice’s eyebrows rise, the spirit nods.

“But you must understand, Anders,” Justice continues. “There is no ‘supposed to’. There is no ‘right answer’. Your death in other histories does not negate your life in this one, or make your life here ‘wrong’. You can see the outcomes of your choices, and traveling between branches as you do… We are both able to live other lives we could have had, had we chosen differently. Even fatal mistakes need not be so, if we can see far enough to avoid them.”

A second chance. Anders should find the notion comforting, and yet…

He hugs his knees close to his chest, studying the diagram in the ashes once more, struggling with the weight of the doubts inside him.

“What troubles you, my friend?”

The familiarity is less disturbing now. If everything Justice is saying is true -- and it seems more and more likely that it must be -- then Justice knows Anders better than anyone else does. Perhaps even better than he knows himself.

“It’s just…” Anders sighs, briefly dropping his forehead to his knees before looking up at the spirit, feeling a bit desperate. “What the hell is the _point_ of all this, Justice? Why do we keep repeating history? And why _me_?”

He thinks of all the mages who had died in Kinloch Hold, and his voice cracks. All the friends he’d lost to suicide, or Templar torture, or blood mages or demons. Anders had thought himself one of the lucky ones, but… had it simply been that he’d been able to manipulate the timelines to save himself? Had he cheated the system without realizing it? He wonders, once again, how it is that he, Anders the screw-up, has this power, when so many people better than him suffered and died with no way out.

“I do not know why.” Justice’s deep voice pulls him out of his spiral. “I am sorry, Anders. I do not know what forces have brought the two of us together time and time again. I do not know why I was chosen, or why you were chosen.” Anders sighs at this, and is about to say something when Justice continues.

“I only know we have a responsibility. A duty. We have already failed too many times in fulfilling it. Only the Maker knows how many opportunities we may have left.”

“What responsibility?” Anders feels himself unfolding, leaning forward. “What do we have to…?”

He cuts himself off, something stirring in the back of his memory, floating gently to the surface.

“Justice,” he breathes, and the virtue blazes in his chest. “Justice for the mages. Freedom for our people.”

How long had they fought for it? The years of struggle, the loss, the bleeding, the dying… Anders doesn’t have any clear memories of it, but he can feel that they’ve happened. He doesn’t know, but can _feel_ , that for years – _decades_ , perhaps – he’s wandered the labyrinth of history, each time trying to find that one perfect solution, the one decision that will finally put mages on equal footing in society.

The shape of his personal history takes murky form in his memory, and Anders is practically breathless from the revelation. The biggest piece has finally slotted back into place.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Justice smile.

“My dear friend,” the spirit says, “I am so glad you finally remember.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! HI. Emerging from my den of paper-grading and US education policy studying to post this chapter, which has gone through three complete rewrites. I KNOW. But my hope is, now that Anders knows what's going on, it might be easier for me to write this beast. Or, you know, not, because of the paper-grading. 
> 
> A HUGE thank-you is due to [kirkwallgirl](http://kirkwallgirl.tumblr.com) for her help in beta-reading this for me. Her advice was essential for helping me make my last edits -- and did a lot to calm my nerves about this chapter! She's awesome, and was a huge help. 
> 
> Thanks also to anyone who's read this far and left kudos or comments! It really has made my day during these last few difficult weeks to see people reading, leaving kudos, or that rare AO3 email that tells me I have a new comment on this fic. I'm not great at responding, but hopefully I'll get to replying to all the ones on chapter 4 before chapter 6 goes up, at least. Aha. 
> 
>  
> 
> [Follow my tumblr queue!](http://phoenixrei.tumblr.com)


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